Structure

When you forge a map, you are forging structures using blocks from
the Canvas palette. But it is the Spaces, Walkways, and Paths that you
are really forging. And the Structure of the Space, the Walkway, and the
Path are more important than the structure of blocks that form them.

Room To Move

Spaces need to be roomy. They need to create Paths through them that
are fun to traverse. They need to have cover to hide behind during fire
fights, and that cover should be part of the structural surroundings.

Cover should be part of the structure itself – it should look like it
belongs there, lest the structure feels incomplete. When you plan out
the structure that you want to forge, you want to plan on how the
structure itself will provide both the necessary cover and the necessary
room to move about. You want a structure that will accommodate both the
movement and cover that you want the Space to provide.

Spaces need plenty of room in all three dimensions, and these
dimensions can change from one end of a Space to another. What is
important is that you consider how these changes will impact movement
and cover as one traverses the Space. If you try to squeeze the middle
of a Space, it may provide cover well enough, but you could make it
unwelcoming to pass through. If there are sharp corners within the
Space, that should be okay, so long as a player is not forced to make
the turn right at the corner where a camping shotgun may be waiting.

Shallowing The Turns

It is important that when a player turns a corner that they can do so
away from the corner, or that the turn itself is shallow so that the
corner cannot conceal a camper. This is true for both Spaces and
Walkways.

Unlike Spaces, however, Walkways should have a consistent width and
height from one end to the other. This means that if the Walkway is
narrow (e.g., say two Forge Units), then any turn in the Walkway should
be shallowed to avoid campers around the corner. Making a 90 degree turn
into two 45 degree turns or into three 30 degree turns is what I call
shallowing a turn. Using curved walls is also a good way to shallow a
turn.

Shallow turns allow a player walking at full speed (perhaps even
sprinting) to have time to react to campers around the corner due to the
way that the camper emerges into the field of view of the player
turning the corner. Unlike suddenly finding a camper at your feet at a
90 degree corner, the camper may be some distance away while they become
exposed to the player making the turn.

Tight, narrow turns if at all should only be in places where heavy
defense (e.g., flag room) is necessary for the purpose of giving an edge
to the defenders – to make the last line of defense a bit more
powerful. But anywhere else I think you want to consider either wide
areas around the turn or shallowing the turn itself.

Dance Floors

A Dance Floor is any area that a player can jump and move about
erratically to throw off the aim of their opponent. Every Space that you
forge should have plenty of room to dance about in, and in all
three dimensions. Any constructs within a Space that hinder dancing can
lead to frustration during fire fights.

With Walkways, the width is some times limiting, making dancing more
two dimensional – up/down and forward/backward. This is okay, and is
sort of expected, but you don’t want this limitation to be over a long
length of Walkway. If all one could do is back out the way they came
while dancing up and down and backward, the Walkway will feel like a
trap, and discourage players from taking it.

The rule is to avoid low ceiling everywhere on your map.
There may be a place for them on your map, but that alone would make
your map the exception. Consider carefully if the frustration is a
warranted risk you are willing to forge into your map.

Cover

Cover on a map should not just be for cover alone. In most cases it
should be part of the structure itself. This is the most ideal, because
it helps your map look more realistic and less cluttered at the same
time.

But in some cases you will be in the open field and want to plant
rocks or trees. Rocks, trees, and crates are good examples of Lazy Cover
– cover that is thrown onto the map and doesn’t really look like it was
originally part of the design of the structure or even the original
intent of the map. The difference is that in open fields, rocks can
actually look like they belong there, that they were not an after
thought. How you pull off rocks in an open field is more a matter of Art
than Geometry, and we will talk about this later.

If you use rocks in an open field, and really any sort of cover not
part of the structure itself, then you want to give the rocks additional
purpose and utility. By making it possible for players to run up an
incline edge of a rock, you offer them the ability to raise their
elevation to see over other obstacles, while also giving them the
ability to move back down the inclined edge of the rock for cover. The
rock no longer provides just cover alone, but also advantageous sight
lines. This is Multi-Purpose Cover. In other words, if you are going to
add cover somewhere that doesn’t look like it is part of a structure,
then at least make it useful in some other way so that it can also pass as cover.

Leaves on trees and bushes make great examples of Soft Cover – cover
that is only able to shield you from your adversary’s vision, but not
their fire. The leaves on Boardwalk are the best examples of Soft Cover.
They allow snipers to hide and wait for targets to appear in their
sight lines while being very difficult to spot through the leaves. The
colors of the leaves on Boardwalk were also a hue that gave neither red
nor blue team an advantage. They are both equally blending and
contrasting with red and blue. That is why those specific shades of hues
are chosen by the publisher in the first place.

Summary

Structures need to provide room to move, engage, dance, take cover,
and recover. Cover should be built into the structure itself – and the
structure should look incomplete without it.

Walkways should be of consistent width and height. When narrow,
corners in Walkways should be shallowed to avoid surprises from campers.

Avoid low ceilings.

Lazy cover should be avoided unless you can make it a necessary
component of your map; and then it needs to provide other functions
besides just cover.